


Swatches

by hummingrightalong



Category: Fear the Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-10
Updated: 2018-04-10
Packaged: 2019-04-21 05:32:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14277969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hummingrightalong/pseuds/hummingrightalong
Summary: Troy and Nick...and company, spruce up the new home they've acquired in Washington. Happens post S3.





	Swatches

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you again Meteora for inspiring me down this road. And everyone who's been so nice about my other ficlets.

Troy's family homestead is in the perfect location, armed to the teeth with plenty of room for the few choice people he brought along.  
It's a new world, he says often with that intense smile that worries most people but gives Nick (at least) hope that there is a future to be had.  
Especially, Nick thinks, when they wind up in a Sherwin Williams. His boyfriend has cheerfully begun typing into the computer look-up system after having found out that the building still has enough juice for that to work, at least.  
"Did you know there's an option to 'paint' the room before you even take the can home?" His curly head bobs up from his intense staring behind the screen.  
Nick decides there's not much he can do but join in, heading off to the shelf full of swatch books. It doesn't take him long to find the color he'd like to paint the bedroom they'll be sharing. It's called 'Mariner' and it's precisely the color of his boyfriend's eyes. He casually sidles up to the older man who is still obsessively matching colors on the interactive display.

 

"Here. This is the color I want." Troy shrugs in acknowledgement (he'll understand later what the little shit has done but for the moment Nick is happy to get away with it and doesn't say why he chose the color specifically), looking up the number on the swatch.   
He absentmindedly nudges the walker that he had to hack apart to get behind the desk. It had been shambling back and forth, not seeming too interested in the boys until Troy went to check the power supply. "Dunno what his problem was. Doesn't even work here." He adds, shoving the remains out of the cubicle. It's wearing a Home Depot vest.   
Nick cackles with laughter.  
Shit.  
They hear a whole pack of feet stomping in their direction.   
Ok.  
Running. Means unlikely to be the dead again. At least not just yet.  
Jake, Alicia, Cooper, and Strand are all out of breath with weapons drain and eyes darting.  
"Where the hell have you been?" Various versions of the question are uttered in unison, along with "and what the hell are you doing?"  
When it's explained quickly, and curtly, with an annoyed sigh from Troy, that the place would need a sprucing up, everyone suddenly wants to crowd the computer screen.  
"Oh my god, I can't believe it's still working." Alicia nudges in, trying to close the project in progress and go through the huge selection of colors to land on a few cheery corals. She calls out the numbers while giving Jake an expectant pout. It works, although he sighs and wanders off, muttering something about orange being his least favorite color. She's pretty certain she hears her boyfriend exclaim 'it's even uglier in the can!' between the sounds of him hacking away at another shambling walker somewhere in the aisles. He's getting better with that left hand.

 

Victor doesn't take long to make his selection. Deep purples with neutral gray accents for the room he'll be taking up. "Something expensive, something royal, all me of course." He takes a leap of faith and asks Jake to be a dear and find the corresponding numbers of cans as well, please and thank you. 

 

When they'd found Cooper on the way, holed up safely in a remote bunker, he hadn't been alone. Now, with his lady in mind (a surgeon from Mexico City that had come up to help wherever she could and wound up the militia's most valuable addition back on the ranch) Coop hunts down some deep vibrant pinks. She'd known they were headed out and had been lamenting the absence of the spirit of her home country.

 

A few of the vibrant colors he chooses are called "Cherries Jubilee", "Exuberant Pink", and his personal favorite "Radish" as an accent color.   
When Jake returns from being a good sport (still trying to talk his girlfriend out of oranges) he declares that he gets to pick the damn bathroom colors at least since everyone has already taken over the rest of the house. They agree, as long as the one with the big bathtub has a distinctly 'girly' lean to it. It's only fair after all.

 

They're almost done, and manage to get things picked out and gathered up in between occasionally calling out "walker!" and allowing whoever is closest to deal with it. Troy and Jake almost have a fist fight over how to redo the main sitting area.   
The kitchen gets a treatment of something called "Cheerful Yellow with white and gray accents, such as "Choice Cream". The big sitting room gets a turquoise-ish called "Lark Green".

 

They hit a hoard on the way out with their load of supplies. Pairing off and covering each other's backs they wind up painting the clothing coveralls they swiped on the way out with gore; everyone expresses relief that they took a few extra.   
The supply party heads back to their new homestead, all thinking that this 'new world', ("stop calling it the fucking 'apocalypse', we're all still alive, ain't we?") Troy always talks about is turning out to have more pleasant moments than they'd prepared for. 

Troy had been ready for this longer than all of them. Originally the place was meant as a family home for his father's older sister, who'd been like a mother to him and his MANY siblings.   
One day, when Troy was coming up on his teen years, his father gave him everything necessary to turn the place into a goddamn fortress. "You know, in case, someday, things don't work out around here at Broke Jaw". That was Big Otto's way of saying 'in case someday the people I sold buckets to turn on me'. 

Turns out, the real inheritance he and Jake expected to be the ranch had become this place. It had been beautiful before. Full of homey ('prepper' the Clarks call them, if not, mostly jokingly, 'cult-y') fully functioning necessities like solar power and clothes washers that could run on hand cranks if they had to.   
A library full of hand-written homey recipes for dinner as well as miracle cures for just about every ailment you can imagine (and some you'd never imagine). That was just one half of the library, closest to the kitchen downstairs. The upstairs had enough fiction and non fiction that even university libraries would be envious. Troy spent many hours greedily absorbing knowledge from every available tome, and (at his Aunt's insistence) some leisure time from classic novels.   
She herself had been a GP, highly respected for taking her personal beliefs into the professional world when she wrote her thesis on 'natural cures and undiscovered medicinal treasures'.

The pantry/underground fucking bunker was stocked well with canned goods as well as the herbs and tinctures described in those well-worn books.

**Author's Note:**

> In case you're interested I have lots of photos of our vision of this place, including screen shots from the Sherwin Williams site. Seriously got way too into making this world.


End file.
